There isn’t a singular solution to optimizing your business for profitability. Rather, it happens when all of your organization's parts and pieces—from its people to its processes to its projects—are working in alignment. To achieve this, companies require a powerful resource management solution. Here’s how resource management software can maximize your business’s outcomes on multiple fronts to increase [#section-one]profit.[#section-one]
1. Resource management software visualizes workload.
I recently spoke with executives at a 5,000-person global organization looking to join Mosaic. After the demo, the firm’s VP asked its president: “Do you have any visibility into where people are and what they’re working on, on any given day?” The president responded, “I don’t, but what’s worse is no one in the company really knows that.”
Perhaps the most important benefit of resource management software is that it gives you visibility into who is working on what and when. Without workload visibility, managers get stuck operating in a reactionary state.
Resource management software integrates with the tools you’re already using to gather data from across your organization and visualize workload. Once you have that level of visibility, you can truly manage and optimize your workforce. Specifically, you can:
- Distribute and balance workload and allocate people to projects with purpose (rather than at random)
- Seamlessly move people around to best utilize your people resources
- Have a clearer understanding of priorities so your teams can focus on the work that will make the largest impact
In short, gaining workforce visibility allows you to optimize efficiency which will drive profit [#section-two]higher.[#section-two]
2. Resource management software allows you to scale.
The Mosaic team has spoken to thousands of companies, and the best-performing teams always have processes and technology in place to support their operations. For companies that bill time and don't have high margins, it’s very hard to grow above 30 or 40 people without a resource management system. This is a very real ceiling. Verbal communication, calendar invites, and emails won’t cut it for a team of that size to work efficiently.
And spreadsheets won't suffice, either. You simply aren't able to manage priorities, workload or understand whether you have too much work or not enough. The right resource management software allows you to manage these while easily adding new people into your [#section-three]organization.[#section-three]
3. Resource management software increases collaboration.
Rather than planning on spreadsheets—which causes a host of problems—teams that use an intelligent resource management solution experience improved collaboration. How? Modern resource planning connects your workforce across offices, geography, and even different software applications to bring everyone together to manage as a cohesive team.
In Mosaic specifically, resource planning becomes a team sport. Everyone contributes to the planning of work. Communication is centralized within Mosaic, so everyone can help find work for people on the bench, and see when plans change and can take immediate action when people need [#section-four]help.[#section-four]
4. Resource management software improves utilization rates.
Optimizing your company’s utilization rate by increase efficiency is essential to driving productivity and boosting profit. With resource management software, you can ensure everyone is busy with revenue-generating work. You can also view time actuals vs. what was proposed, and understand staff members’ balance between billable and non-billable work. This knowledge can help you boost utilization by:
- Automating administrative work
- Distributing work to under-allocated staff
- Allocate upcoming work to under-capacity teams
What’s more, these business insights help managers determine which work drives the best returns most efficiently. This can be incredibly helpful in situations where leaders can’t agree on which work to prioritize (because, of course, everyone thinks their projects are most important). With resource management software, managers can clearly see which work is of higher value to the company and then use this information to allocate workload accordingly.
Automating repetitive tasks, streamlining the allocation process, and keeping your teams busy with high-value work are the fastest ways to increase your company’s utilization rate. In turn, this enables dramatically higher [#section-five]profitability.[#section-five]
5. Resource management software enables teams to achieve their goals.
Delayed work and missed deadlines cause late nights, weekend work, and, unnecessary friction with clients and the team within a company, which can have a considerable impact on its long term profitability. However, automation and AI can help teams streamline planning, determine an appropriate timeline, and effectively define goals—both short —and long-term.
AI-powered resource management software can also adjust to shifting plans in real-time—helping keep teams busy and on track to achieve their goals. If a project begins to fall behind, leaders can leverage AI’s insights to move people around to hit deadlines. Plus, these tools can also be used to forecast if you have enough work or if you need to hire. This all goes a long way in preventing your team from burning out—and your projects from derailing—which will always lead to greater financial outcomes in the long run.
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